CHAPTER XI 
FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 
FEW hours after the head of the sefari has turned 
north from little Gilgil station you are among the 
pretty wooded hills that gather round the base of Gojito, 
13,000 feet high. 
As you press still northward the splendid Aberdare 
range rises abruptly to your right hand. It begins with 
Kinan Kop (also over 13,000 feet) and prolongs itself in 
fine forest ridges that slope to the plain at the northern 
end of Embellossett swamp. 
Four or five miles after leaving the railway, the trail 
crosses a plateau that commands a view behind and beyond 
you that is worth remembering. 
Blue Naivasha Lake lies twenty miles to the southward, 
in the heart of the great Rift Valley, that strange, long 
crack in the shrinking earth crust, that only ends far to 
northward, where the Jordan Valley falls sharply to its 
Dead Sea. Beyond the lake two extinct craters cut the 
sky line, Longanot and Suswa. To east of it are the purple 
crests of the Kikuyu range. To westward the tumbled 
masses of the Mau across which we made our way to 
reach Nzoia. 
As we marched northward all the beautiful land before 
us looks as little like Africa as can be imagined. Were 
it not for the striped skin of a zebra showing now and 
then as we mount some grassy rise or descend some deep 
dell with running water at its foot, we might fancy our- - 
selves among the Tennessee mountains. But leave the 
trail a short way, try and mount these great purple ridges 
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